by Damien Lewis
A few minutes chatting to the bloke, and Grey could tell that he was phenomenally intelligent. It seemed that he could mention just about anything – a geranium maybe – and Sebastian would start going: ‘Okay-yah, the geranium – more commonly known as cranesbills, due to the fruit looking like the beak of a crane. Take Geranium maginificum, for example …’ Compared to most of the men in the Squadron – a dose of doughnuts who’d fallen out of school and into the military – Sebastian was a rocket scientist.
As Grey and Sebastian left the stores, they bumped into Mick ‘Gunner’ McGrath, the commander of the Squadron’s quad bikes. While each quad formed part of a single-vehicle team, the quad-operators also had a bloke in overall charge of them as a distinct force. In that way they could work as one coordinated unit when scouting out the Squadron’s route and searching for the enemy.
Gunner was a shaven-headed, solid chunk of fighting man – a real soldier’s soldier. He was a supremely capable Special Forces operator, but he was also known to be fiery and impulsive. He’d been with the Squadron for an age – he was another of the old and the bold. Gunner was also a real gym queen, always pumping iron. By contrast, Grey put in only the odd appearance on the weights, whenever he felt age was getting the better of him.
Grey and Gunner had a certain respect for each other, one forged over long years of elite soldiering. Grey did the introductions with Sebastian, stood back and waited for the sparks to fly. Sebastian launched into a long welcome speech, delivered in his best public schoolboy accent and peppered with lots of syllables. Once he was done, Gunner stared at him in silence for several seconds.
‘Terp?’ he finally grunted. ‘What the hell do we need a terp for? We don’t want to talk to the fuckers.’ Then: ‘You do weights?’
In his long-winded way Sebastian explained that pumping iron wasn’t really his thing. Gunner had not another word to say to him.
Before Grey and the Squadron’s New Bloke parted company, Sebastian pulled out a mobile phone. He waved it in Grey’s direction. ‘If you need to speak to anyone, feel free to use mine. I know it can be terribly tough getting comms home, but I’ve got this super-duper new mobile provider.’
‘Not really supposed to, mate,’ Grey told him. ‘Didn’t anyone warn you? We’re supposed to be in lockdown. Isolation. No comms to anyone, family included.’
‘No. No one’s mentioned a thing. My parents are actually very concerned about me. I’ve been phoning home every day.’
A little later that morning the Squadron was called together for a special briefing. There was a distinct tension in the air, for they were about to be addressed by the Director of Special Forces (DSF), Brigadier Graeme Lamb, known to the men as ‘Lamby’. They gathered in the cookhouse tent, which was about the one space large enough to house the entire Squadron. If Lamby was about to address them all then something momentous had to be afoot, and the men sensed they were about to learn the nature of their coming mission.
The Brigadier had just stepped up to speak when this dishevelled figure wandered in. It was Clive ‘Raggy’ Clarke – the guy who regularly won first prize for being the scruffiest bloke in the entire Squadron. Raggy was actually super-hard and super-fit, but he was always the last to arrive for any training session or briefing. He’d drift in wearing his trademark black trench-coat, mug of tea in hand, then realize that everyone was waiting.
‘Oh, yeah, I was just checking all the buildings, and there’s no one else,’ he’d remark. ‘I’m the last.’ He’d carry on like that until he had the entire Squadron in stitches.
Brigadier Lamb did his best to ignore Raggy’s late entry and began speaking. His address was delivered in his typically laid-back yet überconfident manner. In simple terms he outlined the key developments regarding the coming conflict, the most notable of which was the decision by Turkey to deny US and British forces the ability to open a northern front in the coming war. Little if any news of the wider war effort or its planning had filtered through to the men of M Squadron. But now, in this one instant, they understood that no forces were going into Iraq via the north of the country – or at least so they thought – which changed the entire roadmap for the coming war.
‘The United Nations has more than had its chance in Iraq,’ the Brigadier told the assembled men. ‘It’s clear that Saddam is not going to comply. That’s obvious, and that means it’s time to get you men in to do the job properly. It’s true that the north of Iraq is now closed to conventional forces, but I want you to know that it has just been assigned as M Squadron territory. It will be the Squadron’s area of operations for the coming conflict, and pretty much yours alone.
‘Your mission is to move into the area where the Iraqi 5th Corps is situated,’ he continued, ‘which is up around the northern city of Salah. The 5th Corps is tasked with the defence of the whole of the north of Iraq. They have recently moved location at night and under complete radio silence, although we understand them to be demoralized and we are expecting them not to put up any significant resistance. You are to find the Corps and make contact with them. Your task is to go in and take their surrender, as they capitulate en masse.’
The Brigadier paused and eyed the room. ‘You should know that the Turks have 130,000 of their own troops massed on the border. They are believed to be preparing to enter northern Iraq and to occupy Kurdistan, the territory of the Kurdish rebels. Needless to say, their presence would complicate your mission somewhat, but they are being offered several carrots to keep them out of the war – most notably European Union membership.
‘Rest assured that Turkey will not be sending in troops, which gives you a free rein to achieve your mission.’ The Brigadier was speaking with a reassuring degree of confidence. ‘Make no mistake, whilst northern Iraq may be closed to conventional forces, it is not closed to us. Yours is a mission that may well change the entire course of the war. I have every confidence in M Squadron, and I am expecting the extraordinary from you in Iraq. Good luck.’
As the briefing came to an end, Grey reflected on what he’d just heard. A corps usually consists of two divisions or more, plus support units, each division being 10,000-plus men-at-arms. At a minimum the Iraqi 5th Corps would be some 20,000-strong. Grey wondered how the sixty operators of M Squadron were supposed to take the surrender of such a massive force. Moreover, a corps would be made up of infantry, artillery and light and heavy armour, and M Squadron was going to be a few dozen men in thin-skinned Pinkies sporting machine-guns. While Special Forces operators were used to being outnumbered and outgunned – it went with the territory – the odds on this one didn’t exactly look promising.
Another thing struck Grey. To move an entire corps by radio silence and at night was a seriously impressive undertaking. It required phenomenal discipline, training, logistical support, management and control, not to mention extreme self-confidence on the part of the corps’ commanders. It didn’t sound to him like the behaviour of a demoralized and ill-motivated force, one that was poised to surrender.
The key question was why had they chosen to move under radio silence and at night? The only possible answer was to hide such movement from watchful eyes. The 5th Corps could fear surveillance from only two possible sources. One was Saddam Hussein, and perhaps the corps commanders were trying to hide their movements from him, in preparation for their surrender. But the other source of surveillance was clearly the Americans, who owned the skies over Iraq. And if the 5th Corps was trying to hide its movement from the Yanks, that suggested the opposite of a desire to throw their hands in the air.
One thing did make very clear sense now, as Grey reflected on the mission they’d just been given. His eyes came to rest on the distinctive form of Sebastian March-Phillips. He was sitting with Reggie, the Squadron OC, and the rest of the men from the Head Shed (the Squadron’s HQ Troop). It was blindingly obvious now why they needed a terp. How else were they to go and take the surrender of an entire Iraqi corps if they couldn’t even speak to them?
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sp; The DSF’s briefing was followed by one from the Army Intelligence Corps bloke attached to the Squadron. Due to the unit’s distinctive laurel-green beret they’d earned the affectionate nickname of ‘the Green Slime’. He outlined the key background to the coming mission. The area of northwestern Iraq had been assessed as being ‘relatively benign’: in layman-speak, that meant that no hostile forces were known to be present in the region.
The main area of concern was Bayji, an Iraqi city situated on the main road to Salah. Bayji was an important industrial centre and the site of major oil refineries, chemical plants and weapons factories. It lay at one end of the ‘Sunni Triangle’, an area providing the bedrock of support for Saddam Hussein. M Squadron would need to give Bayji a wide berth, for neither the local inhabitants nor the military based there were reckoned to be friendlies.
‘The Iraqi 5th Corps,’ the briefer continued. ‘During the 1991 Gulf War the 5th Corps fielded some 120,00 men-at-arms. In the aftermath of that conflict, dozens of senior 5th Corps commanders were executed by Saddam, for trying to topple him. There have been further attempted coups by senior 5th Corps commanders, the most recent being in 1998. From this and other intelligence we assess the Corps as being a hotbed of resistance to Saddam’s rule, and ripe for capitulation. As of today, the 5th Corps is thought to number anything up to 100,000 men-at-arms, but we do not have absolute numbers.’
One hundred thousand men-at-arms. Grey did a quick flash of mental arithmetic: 100,000 divided by sixty equalled 1,666.66. Somehow, each bloke on the Squadron was supposed to take the surrender of over sixteen hundred Iraqi troops.
‘The 5th Corps Commander is one Lt. General Yasin Al Maini,’ the briefer continued. ‘Normally, his forces are based at Salamieh, Salah. However, as you know the entire Corps has recently moved under strict radio silence, and we are just now trying to tie down exactly where they are. We understand the men of the Corps to be underfed and not to have been paid for months. As a result, morale is low and there is little cohesive intent.
‘The Corps consists of several infantry divisions and mechanized – armoured – divisions. In terms of weaponry, the Corps is equipped with the Iraqi-manufactured version of the Russian T-72 main battle tank – which the Iraqis call the Asad Babil, the “Lion of Babylon” – plus light armour, artillery and mortars. I’m sure you are all familiar with the specs of the T-72, and we’ll be giving you a refresher on your AFV recognition drills before you deploy.’
AFV stood for ‘armoured fighting vehicle’, military-speak for tanks, armoured cars, armoured troop carriers, and whatever else the 5th Corps might boast in terms of heavy firepower.
‘The weather window for your mission is prior to the end of March, by which time the short Iraqi winter will be coming to an end. Right now, daytime temperatures are just about bearable, and workable. There is a slight danger of rain, even in the deserts of northern Iraq, which brings the added risk of flash floods, especially in desert wadis. But we assess the risk as minimal, and more than compensated for by the lower temperatures during daylight hours.’
With the briefing from the Green Slime done, the men of the Squadron lined up to grab a brew. Grey found himself next to Scruff, and the two exchanged knowing glances.
‘Us lot taking the surrender of an entire Iraqi corps,’ Scruff snorted. ‘They’re having a laugh.’
‘Yeah, sixty against a hundred thousand,’ Grey remarked. ‘Nice one.’
‘Tell me, if you were tearing around the Iraqi desert in T-72s, would you want to surrender to a handful of scruffy tossers like us, driving Pinkies?’
‘Not a chance.’ Grey paused. ‘What makes the Green Slime so sure they want to surrender, anyway? Remember Qala Janghi?’
‘Fucking surrender? At Qala Janghi? Not a chance. Not a sniff of it. Not in Afghan, anyway. So why the hell should Iraq be any different?’
In late 2001 six hundred Afghan and foreign prisoners cooped up in the Qala Janghi fortress near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif had turned on their captors. They’d overpowered and killed Johnny Spann, an operative from the CIA’s Special Activities Division (SAD), which was the trigger for an epic uprising. If there was one lesson Grey and Scruff had learned from Qala Janghi, it was that battle-hardened Muslim males weren’t generally up for surrendering to the infidel.
That CIA operative was the first allied casualty of the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. As the prisoners broke into the fort armoury, a lone SBS troop of eight blokes had been sent in to put down the uprising. A savage battle had followed, as the prisoners fought to the last man and the last round. They had resisted repeated air strikes called in by the SBS and their SEAL counterparts, not to mention sorties by T-55 main battle tanks operated by the Northern Alliance.
Scruff and Grey had fought a desperate battle from the fort’s battlements, in which they’d used GPMGs and assault rifles to mow down waves of fighters attempting to rush their position. Many of the enemy sported suicide belts cobbled together from grenades, and they tried to blow themselves up right on top of the British operatives. Those repelling the assault – Scruff and Grey amongst them – had believed they were going to die in that fort, so unwinnable had the battle seemed.
With a dozen ranged against six hundred, the odds had been horribly stacked against them. The brutal siege had lasted eight bloody days, at the end of which a rump of enemy fighters remained barricaded in the fort’s dungeon. The only way to force them to surrender had been to pour diesel fuel into the underground chambers and burn them out, though British Special Forces played no role in that part of the assault. But even that wasn’t enough to force the last to give up. Thousands of gallons of cold water had to be pumped below ground before the last few survivors had to surrender, or face death by drowning.
It had taken that level of base medieval brutality to force a few dozen survivors to surrender in Afghanistan: the grim reality of Qala Janghi was forever burned into Grey’s and Scruff’s minds. In light of that experience, the idea that a 100,000-strong Iraqi corps might choose to give themselves up to sixty lightly armed British soldiers seemed to stretch the bounds of credulity.
‘Still, ours not to reason why, eh, mate?’ Scruff remarked.
Grey forced a smile. ‘Yeah, once more unto the breach and all that yada, yada, yada.’
In truth, Grey figured, there wasn’t a man in that tent who didn’t want to get on the ground in Iraq on this mission. Sure, Mucker, his quad-biker, looked his usual grumpy self. And Gunner – the quad commander – threw him a look that said: This is all total bullshit. But one glance at Moth and the Dude, and some of the other young guns, and he could tell they were right up for it. Even Sebastian – their high-born terp – had an expression on his face like Christmas had come early.
Grey knew he had a reputation for being a real grouch in the Squadron, and he didn’t always want to be the naysayer. He had to lead a number of the young blokes, which meant that he had to enthuse and inspire, and he couldn’t forever be the downbeat voice. Plus there was a part of him that thrilled to the prospect of this mission. It was the kind of epic undertaking that he had trained for tirelessly over two decades of elite soldiering. Being in a Special Forces squadron was a little like being a boxer: you could hit the bag all your life, but there was nothing to beat getting into the ring to fight for real.
Yet once they got into the nitty-gritty of how to plan and execute the mission, he would at least air a note of caution and raise some of the key issues with Reggie, the Squadron OC. That was the least he owed himself and the rest of the blokes that he was leading into war.
The men gathered for a more informal mission-planning session. Reggie opened things, mug of coffee clutched in one hand. He started by outlining their mission in more detail: they were to cross the border from Jordan into Iraq at full Squadron strength, and drive north as one unit for several hundred kilometres. The plan when they finally reached the 5th Corps position was pretty loose: it was to drive up to them and ask to speak
to their General.
The men scrutinized the maps, as the OC talked them through the options for their route in. The Squadron’s passage into northern Iraq would take them through the Ninawa Desert, a vast area of sun-baked wasteland a good three hundred kilometres or more from end to end. It would offer them open driving in a terrain devoid of human presence and with little chance of being compromised.
But once the Squadron neared the Jabal Sinjar – the Mountain of Eagles – on the northern border of the Ninawa Desert, that bleak and impassable range of hills would serve to funnel the vehicles eastwards, whereupon they’d start to hit roads and more built-up farmland. By then the Squadron would still be a good hundred kilometres short of Salah and the Iraqi 5th Corps’s positions, and they’d have to find a means to sneak through undetected. It was crucial that they did so.
The OC went on to stress the vital strategic importance of their mission to the entire Iraq war effort. If M Squadron could take the 5th Corps’s surrender, it would constitute a major breakthrough in the coming conflict. In one fell swoop, the entire north of the country would have fallen into Coalition hands. Nothing of this scope and daring had been tried by UKSF for decades, and that, the OC argued, was all the more reason for M Squadron to grab the opportunity by the balls and to make it happen.
‘Boss, I hear what you’re saying,’ Grey remarked, once the OC had finished his briefing. ‘But still, several things trouble me. First, there’s a hundred and thirty thousand Turkish troops massed on the border and poised to sweep south to take Kurdistan. Let’s say they don’t take the carrot of EU membership. At that moment, in their troops go, and they’re going to brass up anything in their path, including us.’
Reggie gave his trademark easy-going nod: ‘Okay, boy, I hear you.’
‘Second, we’ve got a hundred thousand troops from the Iraqi 5th Corps to take the surrender of, and there’s sixty of us in a handful of Pinkies. No way can us lot keep tabs on that number – that’s supposing they do want to surrender, which is a big presumption to make.’
